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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24973141">Nothing and Nowhere is Golden</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pyracantha/pseuds/Pyracantha'>Pyracantha</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Good Omens - Neil Gaiman &amp; Terry Pratchett</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Summer Camp, Aziraphale's name is Astrophel, Everything is good, First Kiss, Foster Care, GoodAUmens Event, HumanAU, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Long Distance Relationship, M/M, Polar Opposites Characters, Rating May Change, Soft nice things, SummerofSpock is very sweet, because I'm like that - Freeform, only minor angst</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 00:48:46</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,471</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24973141</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pyracantha/pseuds/Pyracantha</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a story of love of all different kinds. Camp can be a place that strips you down and helps you know who you really want to be. Let’s find out who we are together.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Beelzebub/Gabriel (Good Omens), Mary Hodges | Sister Mary Loquacious/Madame Tracy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Good AUmens AU Fest</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Prologue</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Oh man, here we are folks. This is my fic for the GoodAUmens Event. I'm so excited for you guys to meet these campers. My theme was camp counselor AU and here we have it. There's a lot of familiar folks but I hope I made them fun to read.<br/><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/summerofspock/pseuds/summerofspock">@summerofspock</a> graciously allowed me the use of her Gabriel from <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/collections/Polar_Opposites/works/23129164">Polar Opposites</a>. PLEASE go read that, it's so funny and sweet.<br/>In upcoming chapters there will be a reference to a foster care agency called Eden and our Crowley LOVES to wear his comfort hoodie that he got from Mary as a skinny teenager. This is from a running theme of <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhiteleyFoster/pseuds/WhiteleyFoster&gt;Whiteley%20Foster's&lt;/a&gt;%20comics.%20Her%20&lt;a%20href=">Crowley</a> wears this sweatshirt a lot and she allowed me to borrow the conceit! Thank you!! You can get YOUR very own EDEN est. 4004 B.C. merch</p><p>beta'd by the sweet @Trebor - thanks for the assist! &lt;3 And of course thank you to everyone on the GoodAUmens Event Server. You guys are the best and I love you all. </p><p>ps: thanks to <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/curtaincall/pseuds/curtaincall">curtaincall</a> for the name help! More silliness with that coming up later.</p><p>Song for the prologue &amp; 1st chapter: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztmFsS2JYVI">Emily Haines &amp; The Soft Skeleton - Nothing &amp; Nowhere</a> (also where the name of the fic is from)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  
</p>
<p>Have you ever been to camp? Summer camp, sleep away camp, pine trees, walks in the woods, cabins with bunkmates. Showers that might once have thought about being warm. Campfires at night where there is some kind of magic. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>One camper will meet that person who they immediately feel they’ve known all their life and the days are full of excitement and the nights are full of whispers. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Sometimes a camper is looking around at all the friends and wondering what it takes to be one. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Other times a camper is defiant, not caring if anyone is their friend or not, wrapping that shell around themselves in order to keep their soft heart from being bruised. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Consider this, we are all of these campers. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Camp is an experience, it’s a swell of possibility, it’s a wellspring of hope. It’s, well, it’s ineffable. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>You never know exactly what you will get. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>And you may not get what you expect, you may not get what you want, </p>
<p> </p>
<p>but sometimes campers, </p>
<p> </p>
<p>as the song goes, </p>
<p> </p>
<p>you get exactly what you need. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>This is a story of love of all different kinds. Camp can be a place that strips you down and helps you know who you really want to be. Let’s find out who we are together.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. sketch of your faces I still don't know you</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>He doesn’t look like a camper in his black jeans and scruffy leather jacket, dark sunglasses covering any chance to see his eyes. His hair is pulled back from his face allowing flame colored tendrils to escape. His current expression is a jumble of emotion. It looks like excitement, like hope, and a little bit like fear, all squashed under a veneer of nonchalance. A veneer that slips a bit the farther they get from Boston. Small smiles slide at the corner of his mouth, ebbing and flowing like a tide of giddiness.</p>
<p>-----</p>
<p>Panic has worked itself into his bones at this point and Az is left with the muscle memory of politeness as he shows his boarding ticket and allows himself to be shuffled onto the plane. It’s a window seat and since he’d checked his luggage, he sinks down with just his backpack in his lap. Leaning his head on the window he flashes back to the day he took this job and how exhilarated he had been to try something so different. </p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>And so it begins. beta'd by Trebor, but as always all mistakes are my own</p>
<p>Chapter name from Nothing &amp; Nowhere by Emily Haines &amp; The Soft Skeleton</p>
<p> </p>
<p>  <i>Sketch of your faces I still don't know you, you aren't permanent. You want all of our moments stolen, blind alleys and hallways to basements. How are you gonna hide till you disappear?</i><br/>Because nothing and nowhere is golden.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  
</p>
<p>---- 3 weeks before camp begins ----</p>
<p>Crowley leans his head on the bus window, listening to the drone of wheels on pavement. It’s been a few hours since they left the city and he is sinking into the realization that he’ll be at camp tonight. His body relaxes for the first time since he’d climbed aboard, his light luggage and gruff demeanor had garnered him a window seat and he is taking full advantage. He sprawls as much as he can, all lean arms and legs.</p>
<p>He doesn’t look like a camper in his black jeans and scruffy leather jacket, dark sunglasses covering any chance to see his eyes. His hair is pulled back from his face allowing flame colored tendrils to escape. His current expression is a jumble of emotion. It looks like excitement, like hope, and a little bit like fear, all squashed under a veneer of nonchalance. A veneer that slips a bit the farther they get from Boston. Small smiles slide at the corner of his mouth, ebbing and flowing like a tide of giddiness.</p>
<p>This is his favorite part of the journey. The clamor of daily life falls away and he feels scoured, all the dark parts removed, clean, like he is being made ready. His mind fills with the plans that Tracy sent. Paint that needs to be refreshed in the Owl cabins, a bunk bed that needs to be re-secured in the Puffins bunkhouse, kindling to gather, wood to chop, and all beneath a mantle of stars he aches to see.</p>
<p>Crowley feels like a string has been cut that usually holds his body together, however slightly. He melts into his seat, the white noise of the bus sinking into his ears.</p>
<p>
  <em> Only an hour or so left  </em>
</p>
<p>Crowley closes his eyes and sighs softly. Tracy &amp; Mary will have a fresh pot of tea and open arms to welcome him back. He settles further into his seat, just a little nap before the bus stops, before he’s home.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>--- 1 week before camp begins ---</p>
<p>Az is late. </p>
<p>He’s jogging through the airport trying to get to his gate. He hates running. It’s sweaty and he’s slow and it makes him self-conscious. He wishes he could just snap and be exactly where he needs to be. </p>
<p>He makes it to his gate and boarding has just started for his flight. His breathing is a bit ragged as he starts trying to preemptively calm his flight anxiety. </p>
<p>He’s counting before he knows it, right index finger tapping in time. It’s an old impulse made from years of biting off words, swallowing them so that the feelings can’t work their way past his pressed tight lips. Ah but this morning. This morning they had unclamped and 10 years of words that had been held back had tumbled out in a torrent he couldn’t take back. It’s no wonder he’s counting to calm himself, he may have no place to return to after the summer is over. </p>
<p>Panic has worked itself into his bones at this point and Az is left with the muscle memory of politeness as he shows his boarding ticket and allows himself to be shuffled onto the plane. It’s a window seat and since he’d checked his luggage, he sinks down with just his backpack in his lap. Leaning his head on the window he flashes back to the day he first met Mary and how exhilarated he had been when Michael had suggested he try something so different. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em> --- 8 weeks ago in Laytonville, CA --- </em>
</p>
<p>It is stuffy in the camp office. He and Michael are supposed to be working on the upcoming Camp Winnarainbow curriculum. She has just gotten the new silks in for the trapeze class and Az needs to make sure that they have enough for enrollment. Michael is late for their meeting which is remarkable in itself. </p>
<p>While most of the camp staffers project an aura of “go with the flow” Michael is as no nonsense of an administrator as anyone can be. No camp can survive without a lot of task lists and meetings and Michael is the keeper of the supply lists. Honestly the most important list behind the camp enrollment list. Az needs to get back over to the theatre soon. He’s on the point of texting her when Michael opens the door laughing. </p>
<p>Oh!” she stops short, “Az I’m so sorry I quite forgot the time. Do forgive me.” She gestures to the smiling woman next to her and says, “Have you met Mary?” </p>
<p>Mary’s eyes sparkle as she reaches out to Az. “Hello! Lovely to meet you pet! I’ve known this one since she was thirteen!” She nods her head towards Michael. Mary takes his hands and lowers her voice conspiratorially, “So what stories would you like to know?” She raises her eyebrow at him.</p>
<p>Az laughs as he mimes thinking hard, hand to his chin, “Well now that you mention it, I do need rather a lot of blackmail material so she’ll stop putting me first on the list for every nature walk and planned ramble for the summer.” </p>
<p>Michael blusters something about “nature being good for the soul” and heads into the office to gather her lists. Mary is visiting Michael from a camp in Maine, a camp she runs with her partner Tracy. She and Michael had been up late into the night reminiscing about their own camp experiences. </p>
<p>“So Az what’s your bliss here?” Mary asks him brightly. </p>
<p>He’s taken aback for a moment, “My bliss? Oh well, I’m the Senior counselor for the theatre arts campers if that’s what you mean.”</p>
<p>Mary cocks her head and really looks at him. A bit longer than is polite maybe but then she says decisively, “Michael was right about you. I think you need to spread your wings a bit.” </p>
<p>Az likes to think of Michael talking him up but then the words catch up to his brain, “Spread my wings? In what way, I mean how so?” </p>
<p>Before Mary can reply Michael bustles back in no nonsense camp demeanor fully in place. </p>
<p>“Az, here are the trapeze class numbers. Can you reconcile them for me? Mary and I are going to tour the rest of the grounds. Just file everything back for me when you’re done. I’ll look over it all in the morning.” </p>
<p>She and Mary head to the door and Mary calls out, “Lovely to meet you Az! I hope to see more of you soon!”</p>
<p>Az smiles as they go out arm in arm. His brow furrowed a bit when he thinks about his “bliss” and what on earth Michael could have meant about “spreading his wings?”</p>
<p>-----</p>
<p>Well here he is, wings as spread as they could be. Heading to a camp almost the opposite of the camp where he’d spent the last 8 summers. He breathes through the still simmering panic and tries to tamp it down to a manageable anxiety so as to not inconvenience his seatmate by the immediate use of the airsick bag. </p>
<p>He breathes, down to his toes it feels like, breathing with his whole body. Grounding himself to the here and now. </p>
<p>
  <em> I can do this. I CAN.  </em>
</p>
<p>Az leans on the window watching the earth fall away. As the ground becomes a patchwork of green and brown he feels some of the heaviness in his heart fall away. </p>
<p>
  <em> Once the journey’s begun there’s no going back really. I hope this is what I’m meant to do.  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>--- 1st day of camp ---</p>
<p> </p>
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